1. Technical Field
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to an image forming apparatus, such as a copier, a printer, a facsimile machine, and a multifunction peripheral (MFP) having at least two of copying, printing, facsimile transmission, plotting, and scanning capabilities.
2. Description of the Related Art
There are image forming apparatuses that superimpose multiple toner images of chromatic colors, such as yellow, magenta, cyan, and black images one on another on a sheet of recording media and fix the superimposed images using a fixing device, thereby obtaining a multicolor toner image. These chromatic color toners are hereinafter referred to as process color toners (i.e., yellow, cyan, magenta, and black).
Currently, image quality is diversified, and use of special toners other than process color toners, such as white toner and transparent toner, is proposed to attain value-added printing that is not attainable with process color toners.
When transparent toner having a high gloss level is superimposed on color images partly or entirely and fixed thereon, the gloss level of color images are enhanced.
In such image forming apparatuses, respective color toner images are formed on latent image bearers in respective image forming units. After the toner images are transferred from the latent image bearers onto a transfer medium such as recording paper or an intermediate transfer member, a cleaning device collects toner remaining thereon. The toner thus collected is transported, as waste toner, through a waste-toner channel and discharged from the cleaning device by a rotatable conveying screw. The waste toner is then collected in a waste-toner container inside the image forming apparatus and may be reused.